


The Art of Sarcastic Fabrication

by Cumberbatch Critter (ivelostmyspectacles)



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Emotional Hurt, Friendship, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 20:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9920939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/Cumberbatch%20Critter
Summary: Shaun would like to say he's good with blood. He's seen blood, he's seen death, you didn't get to where he was without it.But it'sLucy'sblood onDesmond'sblade and these people are his friends, these people are hisfamilyand suddenly, he is nowhere near as confident as he'd like them all to think.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I'm late to this party too I just finished Brotherhood a few days ago and I'm about to start the next one but I wanted to write a fic before the beginning of the next one makes it null and void xD
> 
> I love Shaun. I kind of hated him at first but now I see he's just a giant adorable nerd and I worry for all of them in the games I've yet to play T_T
> 
> I do not own _Assassin's Creed_. Thanks for reading!

“… and that, that’s a Masonic eye. Now those two come together in only one place–” He stops talking. Time feels displaced, almost, as though he’s missed something. Rebecca is still standing next to him, but she has a look on her face that must rival his own. He knows where they are, he knows what he was saying, he knows what they are doing. He knows something has just gone off, but he doesn’t know what. He turns to ask after Desmond – he’d been the closest to the Apple, the one true source of power here. If Shaun had experienced something, Desmond had to have had – and he notices that he is gone the moment that Rebecca gasps _“Lucy!”_

Shaun spins around, almost taken out by Rebecca as she blows by him, and then his sight is arrested by the two bodies and the pool of blood. And his heart stops. Funny enough, that phrase _your heart drops into your stomach,_ it’s _actually_ a true enough statement. He feels the bottom drop out, and then he lurches forward.

“Lucy… no, no, no.” The whispered pleas fall from numb lips. He crashes to his knees next to them. His hand lands in the pool of blood. He feels sick. He looks from Lucy to Desmond, from bloodied clothes to bloodied blade, and tries to make sense of it. He cannot. Sarcasm fails him. It is replaced with ice.

These people are his family. He doesn’t know a lot about that, but he knows he needs them. He knows he can’t handle them leaving. He can’t handle them dying.

It is ludicrous, he thinks, to expect any of them to live a long life. And yet, faced with death, he can do nothing but freeze.

“Lucy… _Lucy_ , what _happened_?” Rebecca was speaking. “Lucy, can you hear me? Shaun–”

“He… he stabbed her.” He looks over at Desmond, really looks at him. He’s pale, he’s pale and sweating and despite the anger that wants so desperately to boil up, the anger that he needs to feel, for a person he needs to blame, Shaun jolts forward, presses his bloodied hand against Desmond’s neck.

He is alive. His pulse is weak, Shaun doesn’t know why, Lucy is bleeding out while Rebecca tries to stop it, and Shaun doesn’t know why, and _he is still sitting there_ , and he doesn’t know why.

“– you know he couldn’t have– the Apple, somehow–  Shaun! _Help me_!” Rebecca was saying, and he jolted forward the few inches to do so. “We have to get her to the car, we have to get her to the hospital.”

Shaun grits his teeth and pulls their makeshift tourniquet tight. Lucy doesn’t make a sound. Strangely, Shaun wants to pray. He doesn’t have time to afford it. He leans forward – his knee lands in the blood this time, warm and wet and slippery – and hauls Lucy into his arms. “What about him?” Another glance at Desmond, whose breathing has gone laboured for reasons they cannot know, and his throat constricts. Somehow, Desmond isn’t responsible. For a moment, a long moment where everything was suspended, anyway, Shaun had wanted nothing more than to grab the man’s shoulders and shake him awake and _scream_ at him, demand an explanation, make him feel the pain that Lucy had to have felt, the pain _they_ felt now–

– but he isn’t prone to that kind of display, and it wouldn’t have helped. Now he just thinks… can’t help but think… if they lose Lucy, they can’t lose Desmond, too. He gives him a hard time, he gives them all a hard time, but _by God_ , they don’t know how much he _needs_ them.

 _He_ hadn’t even known. God, how stupid he is.

Will he ever tell them? Probably not.

Should he? Probably. 

He might be open to anything, if he gets to see both Lucy and Desmond’s annoying face alive and well and maybe he’ll tell all then. Maybe he’ll admit how worried he was, _is_ , now, in the moment. Maybe they’ll drag each other through the mud in both harmless and tasteless jabs alike, and then they will go back on the run from Abstergo like before.

It wasn’t much of a life, but it was _their_ life.

Dammit, now he’s even more overly emotional, and he has to clear his throat to speak. “Stay here with him. I’ll come back. I’ll take her to the car, then get him, stay here.” He drew Lucy closer to his chest. It felt like they had been standing here for ages. It had probably been a minute at most. “Here, just…” Awkwardly, fumbling, he pulled the switchblade from where it had been tucked into his belt. “Take this.”

“Shaun–”

“Just… take it.” He tries to convey the message with his eyes. _Take it. Just take it._ She does. “I’ll be back. I’ll be right back. Just stay here. _Right_ here.”

He has to tell himself: Lucy will be fine. Desmond will be fine. They all will be fine. Within reason. He’s usually not such a optimist. It’s not in his nature. Just this once, though.

  


 

That goes out the window when he runs back into the Coliseum, finds Desmond gone, Rebecca unconscious. He has to stop again.

He can’t breathe.

He can joke that he’s prepared for the worst case scenario. The truth is that he is far, _far_ less ready for it than he pretends.


End file.
